


the thrill of under me you

by scribblscrabbl



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Comfort/Angst, Feels, M/M, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 07:54:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6509482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblscrabbl/pseuds/scribblscrabbl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times they wrestle and one time they dance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the thrill of under me you

**Author's Note:**

> Shedding my lurker status because the angst potential with these two was too much for me to ignore. Though, this didn't turn out all that angsty.
> 
> Title borrowed from E.E. Cummings' "i like my body when it is with your."

1.

In Napoleon’s defense, he doesn’t get fair warning. 

In fact, none of it is really _fair_ , he decides as the Russian comes at him with what feels like the entire might of the Iron Curtain. Not particularly clever or elegant, but he figures Illya Kuryakin, KGB superagent, is built for efficiency, not finesse.

A shame, he thinks faintly when they crash through the stalls, engaged in the kind of schoolyard brawl he never used to win, having looked and fought like a scrawny runaway even after he’d shot a man point blank. A shame that a blunt instrument has a face like that – as exquisite as a Botticelli hung at an angle that throws all its virtues into sharp relief and none of its flaws. He feels the lack of imagination giving him acute chest pains. Or maybe it’s Kuryakin’s arm hooked around his neck, slowly squeezing the life out of him.

He’s about to croak out something egregiously stupid like, _You can’t get the girl every time_ , when he hears the word partner and feels the pressure easing. Struggling to his knees, vision still gray at the edges, he thinks, a little hysterically, that he should be used to this by now, being at the mercy of a beautiful thing.

 

2\. 

“You are orphan, what do you know of duty?”

Illya possesses enough self-awareness to know why he says it, feeling the incongruity of guilt hardening in the pit of his stomach and the visceral satisfaction that roars to life when he sees Solo flinch. A mix of birth and circumstance. A father who was absent, always, in one way or another, a mother who wanted children but had no instinct for raising them, formative years spent learning blind obedience, bent and shaped into a weapon of mass destruction – all of it distilled into this reflex to _hurt_ , to split a thing open so he can see the blood running, quick and hot.

And Solo, with his ready smile and grating insouciance, words sliding off him like oil on water, makes it too easy, as easy as slitting throats in the dark. Except – this time, Illya sees something stick, bleeding into those vivid irises. Right before Solo throws a punch.

In Illya’s defense, it’s all very unexpected. 

In the five months of their partnership, he’s never known Solo to favor his fists over his words, his Browning, or the custom carbine he keeps pilfering from Illya’s personal armory. In fact, Illya would go so far as to say that Solo has a distaste for brute force, for anything that wrinkles the veneer of civility he likes to drape over all the sanctioned mud-slinging and blood-letting in an effort to retain some semblance of moral superiority. Pitiful and misguided, in Illya’s professional opinion, but amusing. 

And comforting, he realizes, equilibrium unsettled for a moment as Solo follows up his left hook with a wild tackle, knocking him to the carpet of their airy apartment in Tangier and straddling his hips before landing another punch, grinding bone against bone, anger bright and feral. And messy, which means Illya can easily throw Solo off, flip him onto his chest and press a knee into the small of his back until he turns pliant. But – he looks magnificent like this, Illya decides, and just a little bit heartbreaking, coming undone at the seams, heart throbbing on his sleeve. So Illya lets him throw a third punch, then a fourth, until there’s blood welling in his mouth and smeared on Solo’s fist, until –

“ _Arschkrampe_ ,” Gaby finally sighs a few paces to their left, then snaps, “Napoleon, stop beating up your partner. Illya, apologize. The extraordinary level of idiocy in this room is giving me a headache. _Scheiße_.”

Solo gets in one more punch before letting up and pressing his fists against his thighs as he stares at Illya, chest heaving, breaths raw, hair unkempt. And Illya just stares back for a moment, tongue searching for loose teeth, thinking this is what honesty looks like on Napoleon Solo.

Then he turns to his right and spits out blood before murmuring, “ _Prosti pozhaluysta_.”

 

3.

Napoleon doesn’t ever _plan_ to lift Illya’s watch; it just tends to happen. 

The itch starts at the center of his palms and crawls outward down his fingers, the same way it does when he sees an Old Master cradled lovingly in its gilded frame. But it’s not the watch that’s beautiful. The watch is just ordinary, leather band, plain face with a long shallow scratch down the middle. It’s what the watch means that makes him greedy. What the watch means to _Illya_ , who never goes anywhere without it, who seeks out its weight on his wrist in perpetuity as if it’s the only thing tethering him to the earth. And Napoleon tries to imagine what that’s like, to be so immovably devoted to a thing when things are so easily lost or broken, figures Illya should know that better than anyone.

It’s a game that unfolds the same way every time like clockwork. Illya catches on before long, an interval Napoleon times with said watch, starting from the second he palms it, fingers smooth as silk, to the second Illya bursts through his door, rising to the bait, rage beautifully wrought.

In Budapest, it’s 18 minutes, 23 seconds.

“This time I kill you, Cowboy,” Illya says flatly, eyes glittering in the mid-summer sun like precious gems. 

“Peril, you know that threat lost its credibility the third time – ” Napoleon starts before Illya charges at him and slams him to the floor – hardwood, and it's tragically unforgiving under his ribs. “Soft – bones,” he gasps.

“Return my father’s watch and I do not make you cry,” Illya tells him generously, voice like the soft glow off a sharp blade, wrenching his left arm behind him, one large hand wrapped around his wrist like a steel trap, the other against his nape, weight hot and ruthless against his back from chest to thighs.

“We – ” he rasps, testing for wiggle room, “have got to find other ways to flirt,” because he can’t help it, has never been able to help upping the ante when he finds something he wants, something he _covets_ like he wouldn’t mind drowning in it. 

Illya stills against him for a long agonizing second, then thumbs the curve of his neck, deceptively gentle, which, from Napoleon’s experience, usually means he’s done for. But Illya doesn’t move to crack his head open against the ground, or crush his larynx with those achingly long fingers.

He just says, with that streak of mischief that can match Napoleon’s one-to-one if he wants, breath warm and even against Napoleon’s ear, “Is only fun when it hurts a little, no?”

 

4.

Illya, being a consummate professional, insists they keep a respectable distance during missions, which means no touching, no kissing, no fucking after hours behind closed doors. An enforced celibacy that’s all well and good until classified aerospace blueprints refuse to be found and one week in Oslo turns into one month, sexual tension so thick that Illya snaps three pens in half, Napoleon’s downing scotch before noon, and Gaby starts punning tastelessly on ‘thawing’ and ‘relations.’

By the time they debrief at headquarters and get back to Napoleon’s wastefully lavish apartment, it’s a no-holds barred, rough and dirty scramble to _take_ , and Illya can hardly breathe.

“I’m ready, I’m _ready_ , just fuck me already.” 

Napoleon’s whining, which should really earn him a firm slap to his backside, but he’s clenching greedily around Illya’s fingers and for all Illya prides himself on his Soviet-made discipline, he’s never excelled at patience. Never when temptation looks like this – long-limbed, wild-eyed, mouth swollen and wet from sucking his cock.

“They say,” Illya grits out as he slides into Napoleon with a single efficient drive of his hips, “patience is virtue.”

First, Napoleon just sobs, spine arching sweetly, heels digging into Illya’s back, and then he laughs, short and breathy, pulling Illya down with one hand curled around his nape to lick an attentive stripe along his jaw line.

“You and I, we’re not built for virtue,” Napoleon murmurs against his ear, playful and still deadly serious. “So we’ll just have to work with what we’ve got.”

Which is when Illya starts fucking him with purpose, sliding them up the floorboards with every snap of his hips, clamping his mouth over Napoleon’s pulse to feel it thundering against his tongue – a distraction that lets Napoleon, the sneaky little bastard, leverage Illya’s own weight to flip them over until he’s flat on his back, trying to recover his breath, and Napoleon’s slamming his wrists down above his head, pinning them in place, groaning shamelessly as he slides even deeper.

“You,” Illya chokes a little, feeling _owned_ , “will be the death of me. I will die here, my cock inside you, embarrassment to my country.”

There’s a second when Napoleon stops moving and stares at him, fingers curling inward, eyes wide as if he’s afraid to blink and miss something impossible in theory and heart-stopping in practice. Then, before unease sets in at the base of Illya’s spine, Napoleon smiles radiantly and leans in to tell him, mouth dragging beside his, unbearably sincere: “There are worst ways to go.”

 

5\. 

Illya’s father dies on a Sunday.

Illya doesn’t tell them how or where, only that it _is_ , as if there’s no need to complicate something as simple as death, to let the past languish splintered and jagged when it can be cleanly broken. 

Gaby curls a hand around Illya’s wrist, over his father’s watch. Napoleon turns away to stare at high tide surging across the shore, rubbing away all signs of life, and knows that simple doesn’t have to mean easy.

It takes him two weeks to work up the courage to bring it up, and only because he can feel a chasm cleaving them in half, the breadth of it more threatening than all the miles between Illya’s roots and his, put together. 

“You don’t have to keep pretending, you know,” he says without preamble from across the room, watching Illya fiddle with a Soviet-supplied transceiver. “Not with Gaby. Not with me.”

The long line of Illya’s back tenses, then gradually loosens as Illya says, evenly, after a purposely drawn-out silence, “I do not know what you mean.”

It makes something in Napoleon snap like a broken bone, because Illya’s willfulness drives him up the wall, because after all this time coaxing words out of Illya is still about as easy as getting blood from a stone – because Illya still wears that watch like it’s a goddamn lifeline and Napoleon doesn’t know what to _do_.

So he marches over, unthinking, grabs Illya’s hand, and slips off the watch before Illya can react, knowing by now precisely how it sits around Illya’s wrist, how it drags across his skin, its weight as it falls.

“Cowboy, you are making mistake,” Illya growls, spinning around sharply but Napoleon’s already halfway across the room. “Do not play with a thing you cannot understand.”

“That’s not the way this works,” Napoleon says tightly, putting the watch on his own wrist in perfunctory jerks. “You’re distracted, listless, moody, and I know you haven’t been sleeping. Help me understand or get a grip, but don’t – ”

He doesn’t get to finish because Illya’s covering the distance between them, quick as a viper, and grabbing him by the throat, teeth bared like they’re aching to rip him to pieces. And then they’re wrestling each other to the ground, twisting and jabbing, bent on drawing blood because this – this is simpler, to tear into a thing and make it hurt.

It ends with Napoleon on his back and Illya pressing in on all sides, equal parts menacing and broken, forehead pressed against Napoleon’s shoulder, fingers punishing around Napoleon’s wrists, heaving and shuddering like he might be sick.

“Illya,” Napoleon says, catching his breath, and then says it again because it’s really quite lovely and he doesn’t say it enough. He weighs the quiet intimacy of it on his tongue until Illya’s grip starts to loosen.

“I see what you are trying to do,” Illya finally says and Napoleon threads their fingers together, shaken by the sound. “You are trying to fix me.”

Napoleon chokes out a laugh. “One broken thing fixing another. Now that’s the most ridiculous idea I’ve ever heard.”

Illya lets out a huff, hands tightening, and Napoleon can _feel_ him scowling.

“You are most impossible man I have ever met,” he grumbles, lifting his head, lashes clumped and damp, eyes terrified, mouth vulnerable, and Napoleon thinks then that Illya Kuryakin is quite possibly the most beautiful thing to ever break his heart.

 

+

Illya might not be particularly clever when it comes to people, but he’s not stupid. He knows Gaby sighs at him mostly out of affection rather than irritation. He can tell Waverly is a good man, and a brave one, for all he’s English and physically unimpressive. And, in Prague, he figures out that Napoleon Solo is the jealous type.

Missions normally go in such a way: Gaby feeds them the necessary intel, Napoleon hooks in the mark with his natural aggravating charisma, and Illya lurks, because he’s always preferred less talking and more doing, or shooting if it comes to that. 

In Prague, Illya doesn’t just have to talk, he has to _dance_ , and it’s the slowest, most effective torture he’s ever suffered, he decides – until he sees Napoleon staring at him from across the hotel ballroom, jaw twitching, eyes feverish, something monstrous stirring underneath, and for a fantastical second, he thinks Napoleon might abandon the mission entirely in favor of wrenching him away from the Prime Minister’s daughter and bending him over a table.

Then the com crackles, and Gaby, being a ruthlessly good handler, hisses, “Solo, stop ogling your boyfriend and focus on the mission, or I’ll tell Waverly you’re emotionally compromised and in need of a new partner.”

Napoleon flushes, then trips over his own feet. Illya smirks and bides his time.

When Napoleon makes it back to their suite five hours later, bowtie gone, cuffs smudged with dirt, Illya already has the French doors flung open. Édith Piaf croons to them from the record player.

Napoleon stands in the middle of the room and looks at Illya, blinking slowly.

“What is this?”

“I thought we could dance,” Illya shrugs, suddenly unsure now that Napoleon’s here, looking confused and exhausted, and beautiful. “But maybe you have enough dancing for today.”

He’s walking over to silence the music when Napoleon grabs him by the wrist.

“ _La vie en rose_. Aren’t you a rebel. And a romantic,” Napoleon murmurs, eyes brightening by degrees as he curls his hands around Illya’s nape, slipping cool fingers through his hair. “Be still my beating heart.”

“One time deal, don’t get used to it.” Illya lets his mouth twitch, settling one hand around Napoleon’s hip while unbuttoning the top three buttons of Napoleon’s shirt and dragging a reverent thumb down the hollow of his throat.

Then they begin to dance.

“You’re so goddamn beautiful it hurts, I hope you know,” Napoleon tells him suddenly, low and fierce. “Watching you in that ballroom dancing with someone else, laughing with someone else, being touched by someone else – I just wanted – ”

And that’s just it. Why Illya was so fascinated, before. Why he’s losing his mind now. He’s always been useful, convenient, indispensable, even, but rarely _wanted_ and never with this blistering heat that he sees choking Napoleon, making him burn. It feels nourishing and destructive all at once, and Illya presses their foreheads together, remembering to breathe.

“Tell me what you want, Cowboy,” he says, smile unreserved. “We have all night.”

**Author's Note:**

> Results of my Googling/YouTubing:
> 
> Arschkrampe = pain in the ass  
> Scheiße = shit/fuck  
> Prosti = I'm sorry  
> pozhaluysta = please (to add sincerity)


End file.
